


O Brother, Where Art Tho?

by TopHat



Category: Bleach
Genre: AU, Everyone Gets Powers Eventually, Gen, Kubo Did His Side Characters Dirty, mostly follows canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28558986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat
Summary: So, according to Yourichi's explanation of Orihime and Chad's powers, the rest of Class 1-3 totally should've gotten powers. They didn't because.... ???In order to rectify this, I'm writing an AU.
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

When Keigo saw a frog skull pop out of an open manhole cover, he knew he was hallucinating.

When the frog skull was followed by a long, desiccated frog body, and muttered, “Hmm, don’t smell much good around,” he knew he was hallucinating.

When the frog skull turned to him, empty pits yawning with ageless hatred, and said, “Wait, no, there’s a morsel,” he knew that what his eyes were seeing was real.

At which point he did what any sane high schooler would do and booked it.

“Nopenopenopenopenopenopenopenope,” he chanted, putting every year of track and field and fleeing angry sisters to work as he clocked what he hoped was fast enough away from the  _ literal monster _ he’d seen. “It’s just a ghost, too much sugar before bed with a delayed effect, gonna get home and drink some milk and it’s gonna be gone when I wake up from a short nap, nothing to worry about here in Keigo-land—”

A manhole cover popped up in front of him.

“Yo,” the frog skull said.

Skid, spin, corner.

“Yo.”

Skid, spin, corner.

“Yo.”

Skid, stop.

“Relax, I’m not going to eat you,” the thing said, pulling itself out of the sewers once again. It didn’t look any less horrendous, all smooth and slimy and  _ moulded _ in a way which organic stuff never was, grey-green all around save for the bone-white frog skull that was its head. Four sinuous limbs padded silently against the ground as it moved closer to Keigo, towering at least half again his height, even bent over. “Most people can’t see me. I’m kinda curious how you can.”

When it became clear the monster wasn’t going to literally bite his head off, Keigo swallowed. “Uh, I don’t know?”

A heart beat passed.

Then two.

The creature shrugged. “Eh, fair enough.”

It stepped to the side. Keigo slowly moved towards it, and when it didn’t lash out and slam him into a wall he speed-walked past it as quickly as he could without seeming threatening, head down and shoulders hunched.

After a block of cowering he lifted his head and turned around.

The frog monster stopped mid-step.

“Why are you following me?” Keigo asked in a small voice.

The monster put its foot down. “I ain’t hungry, and followin’ you around seems like more fun than layin’ around somewhere, waiting to get hungry.”

“Uh, could you not?” he replied.

The monster cocked its head.

“... not let me pick you where we go?”

Its mouth dropped open into a gaping chasm, technically curved like a smile. “Sure, why not?”

* * *

Escorting a monster around might’ve been the least-fun thing Keigo had done it at least a year.

The monster hadn’t actually killed anyone (yet), so it wasn’t worse than learning about why Inoue lived alone. It hadn’t hurt anyone so it didn’t suck as much as learning that Kurosaki didn’t cry. It wasn’t interacting with anyone else, near as he could tell, and that made it less of an issue than every other little misery he’d learned about while being friends with a group of average Japanese high schoolers.

The amount of stress it put him, personally, under, did make it the worst thing since getting yelled at by his sister for nearly failing a year.

“Ah yeah, I remember those,” the monster said as Keigo came out of the corner store with a bag of melon buns. “I always hated ‘em when I was alive because they’d dry my mouth out eating ‘em, but I kinda feel nostalgic for the old days.”

“Want one?” Keigo offered on instinct, habits ingrained by bullying and good manners forcing him to extend courtesy to a creature who felt  _ wrong _ on such a visceral level that Keigo knew he wouldn’t be able to keep down a bite of his own.

The monster waved its hand. “Nah, can’t taste much these days. Only people.”

Keigo nodded and started walking, absentmindedly popping the tab on a soda. It tasted like nothing. “You eat people?”

“Yeah,” the monster said, following nearby cars with its eyes. “Usually not living ones. Too much of a hassle to get ‘em dead. Just find a scrap of a spirit hanging around where it’s not supposed to be. Not as satisfying, but less work.”

“Like a scavenger.” A necessary, if gross, part of any good ecosystem. If Keigo kept telling himself that, maybe he could feel less like he was walking next to a rabid dog.

The monster turned its gaze to him. “You talkin’ shit?”

“Nonono!” Keigo crossed his arms as violently as he could. “Scavengers are a ness—  _ important _ part of any ecosystem, keeping the world clean and orderly! In fact, they’re a critical aspect of every functioning society! The Black Market is as important as the Stock Market, the corner store equal to the wholesale store, the movie theatre to DVR! Hierarchies are fake, and their existence imperils progress!”

“Mommy why is that boy talking to the air?”

His situational awareness restored, Keigo power-walked as fast as he casually could down the street without losing sight of the monster.

“Huh. Never thought about it that way,” the monster said, plodding along behind Keigo, seemingly unbothered by the change in pace. “Not sure how the ghosts floating around hurt stuff, but it can’t be good for people. Spiritual pressure overflowed and all that. Maybe keepin’ ‘em down makes things safer for people. Like... what’s it called when a lotta people get sick all at the same time?”

“A plague?” Keigo said, keeping his voice as low as possible as he angled for the edge of town. Talking with what might be a personal hallucination in public was going to get him in trouble. Of what sort he wasn’t sure, but it was going to be hard to explain an invisible frog monster to the people armed with white, too-long-sleeved coats. Best to take his psychosis to a private location and try to solve it himself.

The frog-monster nodded. “Yeah, that. Cleanin’ up the trash ‘n stuff.” After a few more paces, it commented, “You’re pretty smart, you know?”

“Thank you,” Keigo responded.

A street lamp flickered on.

Suddenly, Keigo realized how very, very alone he was.

“You got a family, boy?” The frog monster asked.

When Keigo looked back, the monster’s eyes had somehow become colder.

“No,” Keigo lied, thinking of Mizuho.

The monster sighed. “Dang. You smell good. Would’ve liked a second course.”

Its mouth opened and Keigo knew pain.

It wasn’t like he was ignorant of hurt. You didn’t grow up in Karakura town in close proximity to Ichigo Kurosaki and not get the occasional beating, and even without many people to compare to Keigo considered himself something of a prodigy at taking it. Hands over the back of your neck, protect your head, tense your abdomen, and roll when you could. From middle school forward he’d developed a combination of techniques for alleviating pain, for avoiding injury, and those five years of experience had let him comfortably navigate the more delinquent side of high school.

The red-hot, ice-cold non-sensation in his shoulder blew every punch, kick, and bite he’d suffered up until then out of the water.

The thing’s tongue pulled back, coming out of Keigo’s left shoulder with a  _ schlorp _ that ran across his nerves like a razor blade across his fingers. He stumbled forward, right hand slapping over the  _ hole in his body _ . Blood welled over his fingers, warmer than the flesh around it, and after a blast of light-headedness Keigo fell to his knees.

_ Oh so this is what being shot is like _ , Keigo thought.  _ The movies made it look cooler _ .

“See, lotta the young ‘uns just gobble up their food, soon as they can get it,” the frog monster said. His words pressed down on Keigo’s head like a hundred fathoms of water, distorting the monstrous grin, matte white teeth warbling in his vision. “I got hurt a while back, had to lie low and stalk some ghosts. Keep my head down, pretend to be like them, and wait. Ended up eating better than I ever had before, and I took it to heart. Sometimes it don’t work out, but even then you’ve still got a meal left at the end of it.”

The monster’s mouth opened up again. “When ya get to the Soul Society, tell ‘em Mucal Cain sent ya.”

A silver tooth appeared on the roof of the monster’s mouth.

_ Through _ the roof of the monster’s mouth.

The monster dissolved, revealing a towering, black-robed figure with bright orange hair, carrying a sword as large as he was, and a school girl armed with an odd glove.

Keigo blinked, and their faces came into focus. “Ichigo? Rukia?”

Rukia knelt down, holding up a lighter. “Look at this, Keigo.”

Then the device went off and all he remembered was surfing through the Caribbean on the back of a unicorn.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mizurio gets powers! Also probably PTSD.

Mizurio was thirteen when he had sex for the first time. It was more awkward than anything, he didn’t last for a minute, the girl didn’t enjoy a second (he didn’t name her, even in his mind), and his father had signed a cheque for the abortion without blinking. From then on he stuck to older women, both because they usually knew something about what they wanted and because they accepted condom use as a necessary part of the ritual of adultery.

“Going to school?” Sakura asked, twisting the top off a bottle of cold green tea and chugging it, naked in the morning light. She was a twenty-seven year old saleswoman, specializing in convincing middle aged couples to blow a few year’s savings on a two-week cruise through Hawaii with fake salmon and a cabin half the size of their living room, a woman he’d met when she tried to sell his father the extended deluxe package, and after she realized neither of them were going to get suckered out of a few hundred thousand yen she politely excused herself.

He’d found her number on the table by the door and the rest was history.

“Yeah.” He buttoned up his school uniform, taking solace in the familiar closeness of the cloth. “My dad would kill me if I got another tardy,” he lied, checking his neck and face in the mirror. No marks.

“Well, you know where I am,” she replied walking over to the bathroom. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

Mizurio left, taking solace in the tightening behind his sternum as he stepped over the threshold and speed dialed a chauffeur.

A cold wind passed over the back of his neck, but when Mizurio looked up the sky was clear as an ocean.

* * *

The cold flashes persisted.

Sometimes it was just a random moment while walking. Sometimes it was when he was called up in class. Sometimes it was mid-conversation, and only nerves of steel hardened by fifteen years of playing social games among master-class monsters kept him from betraying unease. Partway through the day he discreetly went to the nurse to take his temperature, and they found him to be the very picture of health. He palmed some fever tablets anyway as he checked out and dry-swallowed two on his way back to class.

“You okay?”

Mizurio turned to the side nonchalantly, heartbeat skyrocketing. “I’m good. How about you, Kurosaki?” For a guy a shade over six feet and capable of punching out any group of delinquents you could name, Ichigo could move quietly when he wanted.

Ichigo shrugged. “Been better, been worse.” He paused. “I noticed you acting a little... weird.”

Mizurio laughed, waving away the comment with one hand as _yet another fucking cold breeze_ raised goosebumps across the back of his neck. “Just a little sniffle. It’s that time of year, you know.”

Ichigo looked out the nearest window, at the cloudless sky and blossoming trees. “It’s spring.”

Mizurio shrugged. “Hay fever. You know how it is.”

“Haven’t ever seen you have so much as a cold in three years.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“They say idiots can’t get sick.”

“Do you know anyone dumber than me?”

“Keigo would skip school over a paper cut.”

“That’s because he’s smart and knows he can get away with it.”

“And you can’t?”

Keigo let the silence ooze over the two of them, a noncommittal smile painted across his teeth, waiting to see who broke under the tension.

A heavy slap landed on Mizurio’s back. “Whatever, dude. Just tell me when you want to talk.”

“I will,” Mizurio said, this time he wasn’t sure if it was a lie.

* * *

Mizurio had an apartment. He didn’t make a lot of noise about it because he didn’t want to mix girls and friends, because he tried to spend time at his dad’s when he could, and because if his mother found out that it existed she was liable to show up one night asking for a couch to surf on. He didn’t like conflict, and one of the best ways to avoid conflict was to preemptively eliminate potential sources of friction. As a result, the studio on the third floor of a small residence across town was mostly left empty, only occasionally witnessing a furious, hormonal coupling between an anonymous woman and a boy looking to keep his father’s name out of the papers.

It also provided a convenient place to act less-than-perfectly-rationally.

“You can show yourself,” he said to the empty room.

For a minute nothing happened.

Then the most intense cold shiver yet hit.

Mizurio had doused himself in ice water once. It’d been part of an attempt by Keigo to start a YouTube channel, back when those had been gaining rapid popularity, during the summer of their first year of friends. He’d also taken a cold shower or three when he’d needed to become presentable fast. He’d also traveled to Austria to ski, back before his family had stopped talking to one another, and been woefully underdressed throughout the entire trip In all cases, the first touch of cold was the worst, a misery which would eventually abate as he got used to the freezing-cold substance. Unpleasant, but worth it for a few minutes of forgotten social anxiety.

This started that bad, then got _worse_.

“You figured it out. Should’ve seen that coming, but it’s too late now.” The voice slithered into his ear like oil across ice, dark and slick and impossibly _sticky_ , like the words were made from tar.

Mizurio spun around, but the room was still empty.

A hiss like exhaust fumes into a closed car echoed in his ears. “I’m not something you can see with your eyes, idiot. You’ve got to use your heart.”

He slowly turned, taking in every piece of visual information he could. Surgical steel refrigerator, spotless white bed, minimalist couch, all as sterile as an operating room.

The light went out.

“Now you can look.”

Mizurio turned to the windows.

Outside was a monster.

Legs. The first thing Mizurio focused on were the legs, four, six, eight, more, only a few of which seemed to be against the thin glass barrier, the rest of which were short, malformed, ending in twisted feet, each toe curling down into a filthy nail, grown so long they spiraled into yellow talons. Dark hair obscured the body of the monster, only hinting towards a grotesque, bulbous figure, heavy on the bottom and top, like a rotten egg plant blown up to the size of a car.

“Recognize me, love?” it asked, and now Mizurio saw its mask, with two dots for eyebrows, tiny arcs for eyes, and a smile that took up the bottom half of the monster’s face, flat molars each large enough to crush his head.

He took a step back, and apparently that was the wrong move.

Glass shattered. Pain fragmented into Mizurio’s chest, like shrapnel through snow, and for a moment his world was fire.

When he could see again, one of the largest feet was pressing him up against the wall, and the mask was inches from his face. It smelled too sweet, like beer gone bad, black licorice taken past its logical extreme, until nothing remained but cloying sugar.

“I mean, I wouldn’t expect you to remember an ugly girl,” the monster said. Its mouth didn’t open when it spoke. Instead Mizurio saw the words crawl off of it, writhing hair which formed characters and plucked itself out of the monster, bloody red bulbs trailing behind each stroke as they moved across the limb and onto Mizurio. “You only make time for the pretty people, don’t you? Only for the girls with giant fucking bazongas, or the asses that just don’t quit, or legs that go one for days.”

When the monster chuckled words shuddered, so many blades of grass in a maelstrom. “I guess I finally found a way to catch your eye, huh?”

“Who...” he tried, one hand scrabbling for the fingers, the other searching for something, _anything_ to get him out. A knife, a vase, hell, he’d settle for a sufficiently heavy _lamp_ , so long as it would distract the many-legged monster with a not-voice that vaguely reminded him of—

He paused, a slight frame and awkwardly-square glasses flashing through his memory.. “Yua? Yua Nakamura?”

Maybe Mizurio was imagining it, but for a second it felt like the pressure on his neck let up.

Then Kurosaki burst through his window in a weird martial arts outfit, stabbed the ghost of his old admirer in the face, and all he knew was a Davide Bowie concert featuring EDM artists from the next millennium.


End file.
